Redefining the Crisis/Redefining Democracy: Mobilising for the Right to Housing in Spain's PAH...

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Redefining the Crisis/RedefiningDemocracy: Mobilising for the Right toHousing in Spain's PAH MovementCristina Flesher FominayaPublished online: 26 Jun 2015.

To cite this article: Cristina Flesher Fominaya (2015): Redefining the Crisis/Redefining Democracy:Mobilising for the Right to Housing in Spain's PAH Movement, South European Society and Politics,DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2015.1058216

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Redefining the Crisis/RedefiningDemocracy: Mobilising for the Right toHousing in Spain’s PAH MovementCristina Flesher Fominaya

European anti-austerity movements are challenging fundamental assumptions about therole of the market and the state. In Spain, the twin claims of the movements are a demandfor ‘real democracy’ and an end to austerity measures resulting from the global financialcrisis. I argue that these demands are intertwined. Using critical discourse analysis,I explore the Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages’ controversial escrache campaign toshow how social movements actively resisting austerity measures transcend the specificissues around which they mobilise to contest hegemonic definitions of crisis and ofdemocracy, laying the groundwork for the reconfiguration of Spain’s political landscape.

Keywords: Anti-austerity Protest; PAH; Escrache; Global Crisis, Housing; Ada Colau;15-M; Indignados

The global financial crisis sparked in 2008 in the United States has triggered a globalwave of protests. In Europe two key demands have been noted: a demand for more realdemocracy and a need to address the democratic deficit, and the rejection of theausterity measures that governments have put into place, under intense pressure fromthe so-called Troika – the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank(ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – and other economic andpolitical elites seeking to maintain the existing neoliberal order (Della Porta 2013;Roos & Oikonomakis 2014; Flesher Fominaya 2014). Della Porta (2013, p. 185) arguesthat within this recent wave of protest ‘really existing democracies’ were especiallycriticised as politically unable to live up to their promises of equal representation:faced with evidence of corruption and collusion between economic and politicalpower, governments (but also parliamentary oppositions) were accused ofrepresenting ‘the one per cent’ and leaving ‘the 99 per cent’ unrepresented. Whilethese demands are expressed somewhat differently in each national context, in waysthat are tied to specific political cultures and institutional structures, these are not

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South European Society and Politics, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2015.1058216

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merely two components that add together to make a whole, or simply two parallelprocesses.In the context of the Indignados movement – known as 15-M – that emerged

through the occupation of Spain’s central squares in 2011 and has continued (albeit toa lesser degree of mobilisation) to the present, anti-austerity and pro-democracyclaims are deeply intertwined and cannot be separated from each other (Sampedro &Lobera 2014; Flesher Fominaya 2014; 2015). The argument that the financial andpolitical crises are linked is not new in relation to Spain and 15-M (Taibo 2011;Politikon 2014). Indeed, many observers have stressed the importance of thedeliberative practices in the 15-M acampada (camp) inMadrid’s Puerta del Sol (i.e. theemphasis on consensus and non-hierarchical structures) as posing a challenge torepresentative democracy in Spain and to the ‘Culture of the Transition’ (CT), i.e. tothe widespread consensus around the legitimacy of the democratic transition andto a dominant political culture focused on avoiding serious conflicts and ondepoliticisation (Martınez 2012; Sampedro & Lobera 2014). This study can be seen aspart of a recent wider interest in the deliberative and participatory practices of anti-austerity occupations generally (Maeckelbergh 2012; Della Porta 2013). Other keyfocuses of analysis have been the multiple citizen initiatives set up to monitor Spain’sdemocratic institutions or to expose corruption (Feenstra & Keane 2014).What I would like to do here is to look beyond the 15-M’s prefigurative practices, or

those practices (enacted within movements) that members would like to see adoptedwidely in society in the future, such as the demands for ‘real democracy’ made in theacampadas and explicitly pro-democracy citizen initiatives. I want to show how thedirect actions undertaken by thousands of Spaniards to defend basic rights likehousing also pose a fundamental challenge to ‘actually existing’ Spanish democracy inits institutional form and to substantive policies (and not just austerity politics andcuts). To this end, I will analyse one of the most dynamic and sustained movements inSpain – the Movement for the Right to Decent Housing (Movimiento por unaVivienda Digna) – a movement that is both a precursor to and part of the 15-Mmovement (Aguilar Fernandez & Fernandez Gibaja 2010; Haro Barba & SampedroBlanco 2011; Flesher Fominaya 2015), and in particular the PAH, the Platform ofThose Affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca). My specificfocus is on the PAH’s controversial escrache campaign and my aim is to show thatthe contestation of the right to housing not only calls into question housing rights,legislation and policy, but ultimately represents a fundamental struggle betweenpolitical elites and citizens over the definition of the crisis (and thus the neoliberalmodel that underpins that definition) and the legitimacy of the existing model ofSpanish democracy.I will illustrate this contest over democracy by using critical discourse analysis to

analyse the highly charged debate over the right to housing movement’s escrachecampaign as it played out in major newspapers in Spain. The escrache is a public formof bearing witness and moral protest. It is a collective, peaceful form of direct actionthat represents the moral repudiation and condemnation of individuals accused

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of permitting, participating in or perpetrating injustice. It is carried out by thosedirectly affected by the injustice and their allies.

The escrache campaign is a particularly interesting and illuminating case study, notonly because of the strong reaction it generated from political elites and theirassociated media, and the strong support for the escrache from the public, but alsobecause it is emblematic of the wider 15-M’s demand for ‘Real democracy now!’ andwidespread rejection of austerity policies. It represents an important expression of the15-M’s challenge to the CT. This had established the limits of the possibilities ofdemocratic debate and practice in post-transition Spain (Martınez 2012) and offered avery particular form of the ‘There is no alternative’ (TINA) narrative.

Spain’s recent wave of mobilisation is particularly noteworthy for the extent ofcitizen initiatives and mobilisations that demand democratic renewal (Feenstra &Keane 2014) ‘from below’, which have been actively resisted by political elites.The high levels of support for 15-M (Sampedro & Lobera 2014) and for the PAH(Metroscopia 2013a; 2013b) show that Spanish citizens are no longer willing toaccept without question the pacts of the transition, or a democracy defined solely bythe existence of a multi-party system and democratic institutions. The politicalcontest expressed by the escrache controversy forms an important and telling part ofthis wider story of what could be called Spain’s second democratic transition. I willproceed as follows. First I provide information on the context in which theMovimiento por una Vivienda Digna developed and explain the methods used. ThenI present the emergence and development of the PAH before I turn to a case study ofthe escrache controversy. In my conclusion, I show how the escrache controversyforms part of a much more fundamental and widespread debate over Spanishdemocracy sparked by the 15-M, and how it plays a part in the reconfiguration ofSpain’s electoral landscape.

The Context for Mobilisation: The Economic and Housing Crisis in Spain

Spain is one of the countries hardest hit by the global financial crisis and also one inwhich citizen collective action has been most sustained and visible. Initially slow,protest activity increased after the emergence of the Indignados/15-M movement inMay 2011 (Flesher Fominaya 2014; 2015). In the face of worsening economicconditions and social cutbacks, Spain witnessed over 40,000 protests in 2012 alone(Adell Argiles 2013).

A February 2008 survey carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas(CIS) noted housing as a key issue of concern for Spaniards (CIS 2008). The averageprice of housing increased by 180 per cent between 2000 and 2005 and homes wereovervalued by 24–35 per cent according to the Bank of Spain (Aguilar Fernandez &Fernandez Gibaja 2010). Housing speculation and the dangerous dependence of theSpanish economy on construction have contributed to recession and deflation, whichbecame much more severe after the global financial crisis of 2008 (Aguilar Fernandez& Fernandez Gibaja 2010).

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Widespread public concern about housing had already triggered theMovimiento poruna Vivienda Digna in 2003 (Aguilar Fernandez & Fernandez Gibaja 2010; Haro Barba& Sampedro Blanco 2011). The movement initially consisted of numerous groupsacross Spanish cities, including the Network against Precarity, the Regional Federationof Neighbourhood Associations, the Network of Youth Housing Cooperatives(COVIJO) and numerous unions and left-wing political parties. In 2005, a massmobilisation was organised under the slogan ‘For the right to housing. Stopspeculation’ (Por el derecho a techo. Stop especulacion). What was initially quite aconventional social movement took a significant turn in 2006 with the incorporationof youth activists who added unconventional tactics and a more radical set of claimsand demands. While this increased the movement’s profile, the radical turn increasedinternal tensions, reduced the possibilities for institutional alliances and alienatedpotential sympathisers through the use of provocative slogans such as ‘You will neverhave a house in your fucking life’ (Aguilar Fernandez & Fernandez Gibaja 2010).Groups like V de Vivienda (a precursor to the PAH) consistently connected issues ofyouth precariousness with housing speculation, urban corruption and theimpossibility of home ownership for millions of Spaniards. While Aguilar Fernandezand Fernandez Gibaja (2010) highlight radicalisation as a cause of the failure of themovement, Haro Barba and Sampedro Blanco (2011) note that the incorporationof youth movements in 2006 also transformed it into an important precursor of the15-M/Indignados movement in 2011.In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, the housing issue in Spain

acquired tragic dimensions. Now the burning issue was no longer the inability topurchase a home, but rather the inability of homeowners to pay their mortgages andof renters to pay their rent. Mortgages acquired in the context of speculation and ahousing bubble had led to significant individual and family debt that left hugenumbers of people unable to meet their mortgage payments as unemploymentskyrocketed. It is difficult to get figures on the social magnitude of the housing crisis inSpain. The official entity that manages data on orders for foreclosures and evictions isthe General Council of the Judicial Authority (Consejo General del Poder Judicial),which publishes reports on legal proceedings initiated each trimester, but only beganto publish the number of foreclosures ordered by judges in 2012. These numbers donot include evictions carried out without a judicial order; cases where homes havebeen repossessed in lieu of payment; and cases where families have abandoned thehome from fear or shame prior to judicial proceedings being initiated (Colau &Alemany 2013a). Nevertheless, the official numbers are stark. Between 2007 and 2011there were 349,438 foreclosures and in 2008–11 there were 166,716 evictions. In thefirst two trimesters of 2012, a total of 126,426 foreclosures was initiated (ConsejoGeneral del Poder Judicial 2012). According to a United Nations report, in 2011 therewere approximately 212 foreclosures and 159 evictions a day in Spain (United Nations2012, p. 11). In 2013, according to the Bank of Spain, 39,000 people lost their homes(primary residences). In 2014, there were 34,680 foreclosures on primary residences,according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE) (Romero 2015), and evictions


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continued to increase over 2013, according to the Bank of Spain (Romero 2014),despite a reduction in the number of foreclosures.

Crucial to understanding the situation facing people unable to make their mortgagepayments is the particular legal framework that regulates mortgages in Spain, a systemthat has not been significantly reformed since 1909. Unlike in many countries,foreclosure does not satisfy the debt of the mortgage holder. Instead, any differencebetween the value the lender receives for the property and the original debt is still theresponsibility of the defaulter, meaning that not only are Spaniards and residentimmigrants losing their homes (after most likely losing their employment1) but theyalso continue to be crippled by debt, which significantly reduces their prospects of everowning another home or recovering financially.

In October 2012, 46 senior judges ( jueces decanos) declared their unconditionalsupport for a report presented to the General Council of Judicial Authority critiquingthe current mortgage legislation, highlighting the abuses it allows financial lenders,and calling attention to the profound social cost created by foreclosures. The samemonth, a highly publicised United Nations Report on the Right to Decent Housingwas published. The report highlights Spain as a negative case, and condemns austeritypolicies for putting populations at risk and further threatening the right to decenthousing while simultaneously using enormous amounts of public resources to rescuefinancial institutions (United Nations 2012, p. 12). In March 2013, the EuropeanCourt of Justice decreed that Spanish eviction laws do not guarantee citizens sufficientprotection against abusive clauses in mortgages and therefore violate European Union(EU) law (Directive 93/13/CEE on consumer protection). As the social drama of thehousing crisis unfolds, newspapers report on eviction-related suicides spanningall ages.

In contradiction to existing mortgage laws and practice under governments of boththe socialist PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol) and the conservative PopularParty (Partido Popular, PP) governments, the Spanish Constitution (1978) guaranteesthe right to decent and adequate housing. Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution statesthat ‘Public authorities will promote the necessary conditions and will establish thenorms to make this right effective, regulating the use of land in accordance withthe general interest to prevent speculation.’ Yet there is a significant gap betweenconstitutional right and social reality.

Not only has neither major party addressed the housing issue adequately but urbancorruption scandals have also engulfed them both. Recently, the governing PP has beenrocked by a series of corruption scandals involving long-term slush fund pay-outsfrom campaign funders (Feenstra & Keane 2014). According to a 2013 Metroscopiasurvey, the Spanish public feels strongly that changes to the existing mortgage laws areurgently needed (95 per cent of those surveyed) and 91 per cent felt that financialinstitutions had abused the good faith and lack of knowledge of house buyers bymaking them sign mortgage contracts with abusive clauses (Toharia 2013). Not onlyhas housing effectively been placed on the public agenda as a central concern amongcitizens, but it has also been accompanied by declining confidence in the political


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classes, increasing public disaffection with political structures of representation(parties, parliaments and elections) and increasing concern about the quality ofdemocracy (Feenstra & Keane 2014). It is in this context that the PAH has emerged asan important social movement actor that is playing a key role in calling attention tothe housing crisis and that forms part of the wider social response against austeritymeasures and the effects of the crisis in Spain.

Methods

This study uses socio-political critical discourse analysis of newspaper and movementdocuments to illustrate the contested interplay of narratives between political elitesand the PAH during the period of research. Critical discourse analyses ‘primarily studythe way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, andresisted by text and talk in the social and political context’ (Van Dijk 2008, p. 352). Theanalysis of the PAH was based on data from the campaigns, slogans, statements to thepress, news, publications and posts on the official webpage of the platform from theorganisation’s official foundation in March 2009 to September 2013, five months afterthe conclusion of the escrache campaign and the date at which analysis was conducted.For the section ‘The Escrache: Making the Political Personal’, I analysed all of the PAH’spublic statements relating to the escrache campaign, paying particular attention to thejustifications and rhetorical strategies (such as metaphors and analogies, etc.) used tolegitimise the use of the practice of escraches in the Spanish context as well as theattribution of political responsibility for the problem of evictions in Spain.For the section ‘The State Responds’, I conducted a frame analysis of public

declarations from media accounts of the escraches covered in four major nationalnewspapers: El Paıs, ABC, La Vanguardia and Diagonal, using Factiva software and thekey terms ‘escraches’ and ‘PAH’, and ‘escraches’ and ‘not PAH’ between the dates 24April 2011 and 24 April 2013, covering the entire period of escrache campaigns. In thequalitative textual content analysis, I coded public statements that attempt todelegitimise the PAH and the escraches, selecting and identifying the various masterframes that structure the production of discourse. The final analytical section‘Escraches and Spanish Democracy: A Tale of Two Logics’, draws on the frame analysisabove and additional publications by PAH spokespeople in order to contrast the twocompeting definitions of legitimate democracy expressed throughout the escrachecontroversy.

The Birth and Development of the PAH

The PAH was born as a response to the housing crisis, in Barcelona in February 2009,following the bursting of the housing bubble (Table 1). It soon established a networkacross Spain, and now numbers some 224 affiliated associations (PAH 2015). Its firstcampaign, still ongoing, was ‘Stop Evictions’, which consists of nonviolent directaction to prevent the eviction of families and individuals. These actions also bring


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together activists from the 15-M and squatters’ movements. The PAH itself claimed(PAH 2012a) that by November 2012 it had managed to delay 500 evictions, a figurethat by May 2015 had increased to 1,663.2 It has also organised mass protests, andactions inside or in front of banks. The PAH has offered testimony in the EuropeanParliament, provided information for the United Nations Special Rapporteur’s Reporton Decent Housing and carried out a March to Brussels from Andalucıa to highlightthe plight of Spaniards losing their homes. What distinguishes the PAH from manysocial movement organisations is that most members are directly and profoundlyaffected by the issues they are protesting about – they have been transformed bypersonal individual circumstances into political activists.

Unlike the previous Movement for the Right to Decent Housing, which had a verybroad set of demands and recommendations, by 2011 the PAH had focused itscampaigns on three fundamental demands, which they incorporated into a popularlegislative initiative (ILP): (1) retrospective application of assets received in lieu ofpayment (allowing mortgage debt to be cancelled by bank repossession); (2) stoppingevictions; and (3) the development of social rent regimes (e.g. rent control and councilhousing). Spanish ILPs require 500,000 signatures for parliamentary consideration.

Table 1 Chronology of the PAH: Major Events

Movements for the right to decent housing before the PAH2004 Platform for Decent Housing created (Plataforma por una vivienda digna)20 June 2005 Protest ‘For the Right to Housing: Stop Speculation’ (Por el Derecho a Techo:

STOP ESPECULACION)14 May 2006 V de Vivienda (‘H for Housing’ – play on V for Vendetta) movement created2 July 2006 Convergence of movements into what becomes known as the Right to Decent

Housing Movement (Movimiento por una Vivienda Digna)

PAH2008 Housing bubble bursts and sharp increase in foreclosures and evictionsFebruary 2009 The PAH is born in Barcelona and rapidly spreads to other Spanish cities2009–10 STOP EVICTIONS campaign (STOP Desahucios) and the ILP begins;

resolution intended to coincide with the November 2011 general electionMarch 2011 First refusal to consider the ILP and institutional blocking by the two major

parties (PP and PSOE)15 May 2011 15-M is born in Madrid and rapidly spreads to other citiesApril 2012 ILP is submitted to parliament for the second time6 October 2012 Mass protests of the PAH in major cities1 February 2013 PP government refuses to consider the ILP5 February 2013 PAH spokesperson Ada Colau’s testimony in parliament goes viral after she

calls parliamentarians criminals over the crisis and the housing issue12 February 2013 PP cedes to mass media and popular pressure and considers the ILP for debate

but rejects all of its central demands/proposals13 February 2013 Escrache campaign begins15 June 2013 The PAH suspends its escrache campaign but says it will restart it if necessary7 May 2014 PAH spokesperson Ada Colau steps down15 June 2014 Former PAH spokesperson Ada Colau announces the new municipal

confederation party Guanyem Barcelona (later Barcelona en Comu) to‘reclaim democracy’

13 June 2015 Ada Colau becomes Mayor of Barcelona


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The ILP was submitted twice in 2011 (coinciding with the general election campaign)but was rejected by the PSOE government, whcih alleged that the previous week a‘similar’ ILP had been submitted by the Ecopacifist Greens, a group that allegedly hadnever worked on the housing issue and whose ILP was badly written and lacking injuridical content. In response the PAH publicly called for a boycott of the PSOE andthe PP, accusing them of bowing down to the banks:

the PAH recognises the PSOE and the PP as declared enemies and warns that if thejust demands of the PAH are not [met], we will do everything in our power to makesure that no mortgage holder . . . and no one in solidarity with the social drama andalarming housing emergency this country is living through votes for them everagain. (PAH 2011)

This call for a boycott of the two major parties was framed as a rejection of the two-party system in which the PP and the PSOE alternate in government.In 2012, after the Ecopacifist Greens withdrew their ILP, the PAH, together with other

collectives, opened another ILP process, organising amassmobilisation on 6October toraise support for the initiative. In February 2013, they presented the ILP to parliamentwith almost 1.5 million signatures, and this time it was the then governing PP thatrefused to admit it for debate. Thousands of people gathered to protest in front of the PPheadquarters, and the PAH launched a platform called Hearme.com (oigame.com)along with a mass email campaign to PP members of parliament, which allegedlygenerated over amillion emails (PAH2013a). Shortly thereafter, PAH spokespersonAdaColau appeared before parliament at the invitation of the EconomicCommission on theProtection of Mortgage Debtors, and delivered a devastating critique of the existinglegal framework, the social reality of those affected bymortgage debt, and the alignmentof the government with financial interests. Her intervention went viral on social media.A week later, the PP changed its decision and admitted the ILP for debate, butunilaterally voted against it. Given the party’s absolute parliamentary majority, theywere able to defeat it. Having exhausted all legal recourses available for change throughinstitutional channels, the PAH announced a ‘Green Spring’ and a new set of actions.The adoption of the controversial escrache technique was the most noteworthy

innovation, one that catapulted the PAH even more into the media spotlight, but at astrategic cost. It provided ammunition for the PP and the PSOE to shift attention awayfrom the housing crisis and onto an attack on the tactic itself, thereby unleashing adebate over legitimate forms of political action in democracy. This debate quicklytranscended the issue of housing to generate a more fundamental debate aboutdemocracy itself.

The Escrache: Making the Political Personal

The ‘occupation’ of central squares and plazas has been the most noted practice in thecontext of anti-austerity and crisis-oriented protest activities. The escrache is lesswidespread, and more controversial in that it personalises politics by bringing themout of the (collective) public sphere and back to the (individual) personal sphere.


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The escrache targets politicians in their homes or other places they frequent in theirdaily lives. An escrache is a form of direct action that involves a collective, public andpeaceful act of moral repudiation of an individual accused of perpetrating,participating in or allowing an injustice by their victims. For those adopting thetechnique, it is a last-resort act of subversion, a weapon of the weak against aninaccessible and hegemonic power, legitimised by the moral worth of the victimsagainst the moral corruption of the target of the escrache.

The escrache began in post-authoritarian Argentina as a means of naming andshaming perpetrators of the Dirty War who had gone unpunished thanks to amnestylaws and were free to resume their lives after having destroyed the lives of so many whohad lost their loved ones to torture and the infamous ‘disappearances’. In the face ofinjustice, victims would go to the homes of known perpetrators or public places and‘out’ them. As the slogan of the association HIJOS3 (which popularised the practiceand gave the slang term its political connotation4) put it, ‘If there is no justice there isescrache.’ The practice later spread through Latin America and beyond the context ofdictatorships to be applied to the financial policy of Argentine President de la Rua in2001 and 2002, known as the corralito, which restricted access to cash, and personalbank accounts. Escraches took place in front of banks, businesses, politicians andtelephone companies, and involved whistling ( pitadas, a sign of disapprobation),street theatre, chanting and other symbolic acts. The idea is that in the face ofimpunity for political and economic elites, there should be public rejection. In the caseof the victims of the dictatorships, HIJOS explains,

Since there is no justice let there be at least social condemnation, let them be pointedout on the streets for what they are: criminals. Let them not hold public office, andmay the politicians and businesspeople (who usually do know about their pasts) firethem or hide them to avoid the embarrassment of it being known that they hiremurderers – or so that they don’t lose votes or clients. (HIJOS n.d.)

Internal Tension of the Escrache in the Spanish Context

Central to the escrache is the impunity of perpetrators/facilitators whose acts ordecisions create or perpetuate the situation of the victims, and the revelation of theirtrue nature, bringing about public social condemnation. In Spain, the escrache wastransferred from a post-dictatorial context, where the targets were individuals who hadbeen directly involved in crimes against humanity, to a democratic context where thetargets are democratically elected representatives whose ‘crime’ is complicity withfinancial interests and failure to take action on the housing crisis. This is a powerfulextension of the practice, but one with internal tensions that are strategically difficultto resolve. On the one hand, the escrache is designed to reveal the identity and stripaway the legitimacy of those political actors whose actions or inaction cause personalharm to those performing the escrache. In the context of the Spanish housing crisis andthe bailing out of banks with public funds, the argument is that not only is harmcaused to the victims but also that these same actions result in benefits for political and


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economic elites, placing their interests above those of the ordinary citizens. At thesame time that PAH is naming and shaming politicians for their lack of humancompassion, however, it also frames the escraches as actions of last resort to appeal tothe politicians’ humanity and individual conscience, by narrating throughmegaphones personal stories about the human cost of evictions, by taking wholefamilies to the escraches and by getting the message directly to the politicians in theirhomes, their neighbourhoods or public venues.The original notion of the inaccessibility of elites in Argentina (which is the source

of their impunity – they are untouchable) is now transferred to a critique of theinaccessibility of political leaders to the citizens, and, in a context of high-profilecorruption cases linked to speculation and pay-outs, to their own impunity. Unlike thetargets of the escraches in Argentina, who attempted to keep a low profile to distancethemselves from their past actions, the PP politicians in contemporary Spain are nothiding but rather occupying public positions as elected officials. The PAH’s deliberatechoice of the term escrache, which is clearly linked to the atrocities of the Argentinianand Chilean dictatorships, and the use of the term ‘financial genocide’ to describe thehousing crisis, attempts to forge a moral equivalence between the PP and the membersof the military regimes. This equivalence also raises the spectre of Spain’s owndictatorship, since the PP is the political descendant of the remnants of the Francoregime (being formed originally by former Franco minister Manuel Fraga, whocontinued to hold public office until 2011). In choosing this discourse, the PAH is alsoforging an equivalence between the military dictatorships of Argentina, Chile andSpain and the dictatorship of the markets to highlight the human costs of both (seequote below), framing their arguments in terms of basic human rights.At the same time, they invoke the will and needs of the people, of ‘society’ against an

‘illegitimate’ group of politicians who fail to represent them. The ‘Campaign ofEscraches, #Phase One: there are lives at stake’ was tagged with the slogan ‘PAHdagogyfor their lordships’ (PAHdagogıa para sus senorıas), highlighting its pedagogical aspect.The PAH slogan ‘If their lordships won’t come to the PAH, the PAH will come to theirlordships’ simultaneously denounces the lack of accessibility of politicians to ordinarycitizens and indicates the desire to have dialogue and to persuade (thereby holding outthe possibility that the other side can be persuaded). Simultaneously this binarydenunciation/dialogue enters into tension with the explicit reference to the Argentinedictatorship and the naming and shaming aspect of the campaign, which involvedcalling the PP politicians perpetrators of financial genocide (thus decreasing thelikelihood that they will feel compelled to be persuaded to accept the ILP). The PAHexplained the campaign thus:

New PAH Campaign: Escraches, let’s put names to those responsible for the#financial genocide.

We have called this campaign escrache in allusion to the protests in Argentina (wherethey were used to denounce the torturers of the dictatorship) and which will takeplace in the homes or work places of the people we want to denounce. It will be a


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peaceful campaign and we are working with lawyers, artists’ collectives and designersso that the campaignwill have the widest possible public repercussion that will enableus to reach our objectives. We respect the freedom of vote of members of parliamentbut feel we have the right as citizens to inform themof the dramatic consequences thattheir decision will have because we are living them daily. (PAH 2013b)

The PAH’s campaign is framed within a profound critique of Spanish democracy,whereby the closed-list voting system enforces party discipline, with sanctions formembers who vote against the party leadership. Given the PP’s declared opposition tothe ILP, the escrache campaign is also ostensibly designed to persuade individualmembers to vote according to their conscience. The campaign is explicitly framed asan expression of the will of the people who, according to surveys, support the ILPproposal and as a measure of last resort after all other institutional possibilities forcitizen participation have been exhausted, highlighting the profound democraticdeficit of the Spanish political system and representative democracies in general:

From the affected5 to the members of parliament [De afectado a Diputado]: We havereached the point where we believe that with the ILP, we have exhausted all thepossible avenues that the current system allows to modify the law. Now it’s thepoliticians’ turn. It’s time to respond to the citizens’ demands and stop respondingto the dictates of the banks. It’s for this reason that the PAH is initiating a gradualcampaign to inform and persuade the members of the parties that have manifestedtheir opposition to the minimum measures of the ILP so that they will put pressureon their parties to include them. (PAH n.d.)

The decision to bring narratives about loss of homes directly to high-rankingpoliticians’ homes (often located in wealthy neighbourhoods) also has an importantsymbolic power.

The escrache is a collective action that attempts to give a social and political meaningto what is often framed as an individualmisfortune: eviction from one’s home. This isalso the way activists have responded to the tragic eviction-related suicides. After awoman facing eviction took her life, some 8,000 protestors stood in front of the Palaceof Justice of Barakaldo, chanting slogans such as ‘It’s not a suicide, it’s a homicide’,‘They get the money, we get the dead’ and ‘Financial terrorism must be stopped’(Europa Press 2012). The PAH also responds to the suicides by insisting they beunderstood as a systemic, even intentional, result of what they call, in keeping with theescrache narrative, ‘financial genocide’: ‘They call it a crisis but it is a swindle, they call itsuicide but it is #Financial Genocide’ (PAH 2012b). PAH collectives have carried outescraches all over Spain, targeting high-profile members of the PP (the only party tooppose the ILP measures). The most controversial were the visits to politicians’ homeswhile their families were allegedly at home.

The State Responds

The escrache campaign met with a full frontal response from the PP and the right-wingnewspaper ABC, which adopts an editorial line aligned with the PP. The PSOE also


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denounced the escrache tactic, albeit less vociferously, and the newspaper El Paıs,editorially aligned with the PSOE, adopted an ambiguous position. Members of the PPalso initiated civil suits against the PAH for harassment (acoso). The escrache wascharacterised as an illegitimate form of political expression in a democracy. PPspokespeople denounced the escraches as ‘attacks on representatives of popularsovereignty’ (Tejedor & Reventos 2013). They argued that ‘Violence is not a methodthat supports democracy and even the most worthy cause is lessened if it is defendedby violence’ (Europa Press 2013). The PP Secretary General warned that, ‘When the lawand the rules of the democratic game are violated, reason is lost, the parliamentarian’swill cannot be coerced’ (Mora 2013). The PP Parliamentary Spokespersoncharacterised the escraches as ‘absolutely unjustifiable’. The Minister of Justice assertedthat ‘escraches affect the democratic equilibrium’ and that ‘if a member of parliamentcannot act freely, the principle of representation is broken’ (Garea 2013). (The issue ofparty discipline whereby party members cannot vote freely without risking theirposition was not acknowledged.) A leading PP member argued that ‘the escraches . . .are not protests . . . They are acts of harassment that no democratic countrycan tolerate . . . The way to manifest6 [your opinion] is through the ballot box’(ABC 2013a).PP members, including the party President, repeatedly characterised the escraches as

‘profoundly anti-democratic’, and argued against their ‘violence’ (repeatedly usingterms such as acoso, which means ‘harassment’ but also ‘assault’, and violentar, whichmeans ‘to violate’). PP members characterised the escrache as akin to what the Nazisdid to the Jews in Germany (marking them out), and then began to engage in adefamation campaign alluding to ties between the PAH and Basque separatist terroristgroup ETA (Basque Country and Freedom). PP Secretary General Cospedalcharacterised the escraches as ‘pure Nazism’ (Manetto 2013), and the leader of theBasque PP argued that the escraches in front of people’s homes are carried out ‘exactlylike people in ETA’s circle do’ (Mora 2013). Not only was a moral equivalence madebetween the PAH (a group with no explicit ideology beyond the demand for the rightto decent housing) and the Nazis and Basque terrorists, but actual ties were alluded toas well (ABC 2013b).PAH spokesperson Ada Colau was subjected to a distorted rendering of her activist

biography in the ABC, in which her participation in protests during the Global JusticeMovement in front of EU embassies was characterised as ‘attacks’ on the embassies,and allegations were made about her personal links to militant, radical, violent activistcircles in Spain (ABC 2013c). In a move that attempted to delegitimise the grassrootsbase of the movement, the ABC argued that the escraches were in fact organised byprofessional agitators rather than by ordinary citizens who were ‘unhappy’ aboutevictions (ABC 2013d). At the same time, and in keeping with a tactic used before todelegitimise popular protest in Spain (Flesher Fominaya 2011), the PP accused thePAH of being supporters of or manipulated by the PSOE (ABC 2013b).Legal and police authority was also brought to bear against the PAH. In March 2013,

18 PAH members who had engaged in escraches were fined between e300 and e6,000


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each (Duva 2013a). Most striking, however, was the prohibition of the use of the termescrache by police, ordered by the second-in-command of the National Police Force.The order states that in all paperwork relating to escraches ‘The term escrache will nolonger be used [sic] to be replaced by the corresponding correct Castilian term(harassment, threats, coercion, etc.)’ (Duva 2013b). The substitution of a term thatdenotes nonviolent direct action by terms that all have a violent connotation was notlost on the National Police Union, which responded with the followingrecommendation to their members: ‘In compliance with the orders received lastFriday, said term can be substituted by “following, peaceful protest” or any other termthat does not imply imputing a punishable offence on anyone, to avoid civil actionsbeing brought by the affected’ (Duva 2013b). The union justified its recommendationon the grounds that if the targeted politicians did not make a claim against theprotesters, the protesters could not then sue the police for false charges (Duva 2013b).Given the actions of some police units and firefighter unions in Spain in solidaritywith anti-austerity protesters since the beginning of the crisis (Flesher Fominaya2014), it is at least possible that the motives of the police are less self-interested thanthe missive suggests. The effect in any event was to decriminalise the escraches in theface of an order to criminalise them.

The counter-campaign worked to decrease public support for the escraches,despite overall support remaining high: support fell from 89 per cent in March to78 per cent in April7 (Metroscopia 2013a; 2013b). Instead of talking about Spain’shousing crisis, politicians and media accounts focused on the legitimacy orillegitimacy of the tactic itself, thereby shifting the focus away from the issue andbringing into question the blamelessness and moral worth of the victims of thehousing crisis, which had been taken for granted until then. In this sense, theescrache campaign backfired, because not only did it fail to meet its explicitobjectives of changing PP votes but it also lost both moral ground and the focus onthe housing crisis.

What it did do, however, was to open to contestation the idea of representativedemocracy as representing the will of the people, while also posing a challenge to thevery notion of ‘crisis’ as used by political and economic elites to justify their crisis-related policies. The escrache campaigns also increased support for the PAH,establishing and extending alliances with other actors involved in the 15-M/Indignadosmovement, such as Juventud Sin Futuro (Youth without Future), and popularising theescrache as a movement tactic beyond the PAH.

Escraches and Spanish Democracy: A Tale of Two Logics

The PAH escrache campaign not only attempts to highlight the costs of the housingcrisis in Spain, but more broadly critiques the existing democratic deficit ofrepresentative democracy. In doing so, it shares one of the central themes of the recentglobal wave of anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests (Flesher Fominaya 2014).PAH discourse frames the escrache as:


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. an expression of the will and outrage of the people as witnessed by survey data, andmass support for public protests convoked by the PAH;

. a corrective to citizens’ lack of access to and influence on legislation;

. a critique of closed lists and party discipline that acts as a barrier to the will of thepeople, and a call for members of parliament to vote according to their conscience;

. a narration (bearing witness) of the social drama of human suffering as aconsequence of the political actions that cause and perpetuate the effects of theglobal financial crisis;

. a pedagogical campaign for politicians and the public that counters the hegemonicnarratives of the crisis with counter-narratives from below;;

. a direct action of last resort by victims suffering human rights violations.

Despite focusing on PP politicians (because they opposed the ILP), the PAH hasadopted the tendency of Spanish autonomous movements (since at least the GlobalJustice Movement) to critique all major institutional political parties regardless ofideological affiliation (Flesher Fominaya 2014). Spanish 15-M activists, including thePAH, have symbolically erased the ostensible ideological differences between the twomajor parties via the widespread use of the combined acronym and hashtag ‘PPSOE’.This move fuses the opposition into a unified actor but also enables a critique of thebipartisan Spanish democratic system in which the two major parties alternate inpower. This critique was later developed into an escrache al bipartidismo (escracheagainst bipartisanism) (PAH 2011) during the European Parliament elections of 2014,a factor that helped lay the groundwork for the victory of Podemos (We Can), in whichthe newly established party gained five seats, and later for the creation of the municipalelectoral platform Barcelona en Comu, headed by PAH spokesperson Ada Colau.Barcelona en Comu forms part of the municipalist movement that has presentedcandidacies in the 2015 municipal elections all over Spain, and that is closely tied to15-M and to numerous alternative leftist parties. It is no coincidence that Barcelona enComu (initially Guanyem Barcelona) elected Colau to head the list. After a successfulcampaign and post election negotiations, Ada Colau became Mayor of Barcelona onJune 13, 2015.8

In contrast, the PP, the PSOE and the newspapers aligned with their positions (ABCand El Paıs, respectively) continued, in their editorials, to defend the idea ofrepresentative democracy as the legitimate form of popular expression, and itsincompatibility with methods of direct action and public protest. In this view,escraches were framed not as expressions of popular will but as attacks on it. Applyingthe logic of representative democracy, the PP has argued that the escraches should beunanimously condemned because they are illegitimate, violent attempts to coerce thevote of elected politicians who represent the sovereign will of the people. They are thusan unacceptable form of expressing opinions and shaping policy in a democracy.Ada Colau countered the PP’s characterisation of the movement in numerous

public statements. In an open letter to the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, she putforth an alternative understanding of the crisis and democracy:


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The PAH . . . is a nonpartisan movement, plural and heterogeneous, that bringstogether very different people who are outraged by the abuses of the financial systemand the complicity they have found in your government and in the one thatpreceded you . . . This exemplary movement has exhausted every avenue that theinsufficient Spanish democracy has to offer: for more than four years we have triedto negotiate with the banks, we have talked to political parties, to social services, tocity councils . . . we have put resources into the judicial system and we have slavedaway to gather almost one and a half million signatures. But all for nothing, the PPhas not budged an inch and has announced that they will reject the measures in theILP . . . Instead of listening to the people, you try to generate confusion bycomparing our peaceful actions to ETA terrorism or Nazi Germany. Remember thatin the question of evictions the only homes that have been violated and the onlydead have come from the citizens . . . Let me finish by using the parallel with NaziGermany that you so lightly adopt. While there can be no comparison between thegravity of the two cases, in both we are talking about the systematic violation ofhuman rights. In Spain we don’t have concentration camps, deportations or massmurders. But we do have violent evictions and thousands of people who cannotmeet their basic needs, condemned for life to social exclusion and the undergroundeconomy. And all to benefit the privileges and astronomical profits of the financialelites . . . A democracy that allows the systematic violation of human rights, and infact promotes their violation, is not a democracy, in spite of holding a vote everyfour years. Democracy will be when the common interest is placed before thedictates of the market. When nothing is more important than the life and dignity ofthe people. (Colau & Alemany 2013b)

Against the existing model of representative democracy defended by the PP, Colauoffers a vision of a participatory democracy that listens and responds to the needs ofthe people. In the face of a deficient democracy based on institutional politics, Colauoffers an autonomous social movement, in keeping with her own political roots in theautonomous global justice and squatting movements:

This is the strength of the collective: we are a profoundly democratic movement thatbelieves in decentralisation and the leadership of all who participate in it. This is oneof the secret ingredients that explains how people who are living through the mostdifficult times can bring out the best in themselves. Empowerment and solidaritymake us unstoppable. (Colau & Alemany 2013b)

For Colau, the movement is not just about achieving specific political objectives butalso about reclaiming human dignity and self-worth through solidarity. It is aboutcollective action in a ‘crisis’ context, in which people have lost those things whichmodern society tells them gives them worth – a job and a home:

People arrive with their self-esteem in tatters, they find support and then want tohelp others. It is a process almost everyone describes as a rebirth: the transformationfrom afectado (affected) to activist. It is the most beautiful thing I have seen in mylife. (Lopez Iturriaga 2013)

In keeping with a theme running through the European wave of anti-austerityprotests, the PAH is re-engaging with the state and (a) contesting the notion of crisis asthe result of abstract economic processes and recognising that political decisions lie


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behind it, (b) contesting the legitimacy of a state that represents the interests of thebeneficiaries of the market over those of the people and (c) expressing outrage thatbanks are bailed out with public money while the public suffers devastatingconsequences and is told that austerity measures are necessary to overcome the ‘crisis’.It uses a combination of institutional mechanisms and direct action to call attention tothe human drama of those affected by the crisis, while alleging that the ‘crisis’ is in facta deliberate ‘swindle’, enacted by political and economic elites who, thanks to publicbailouts, do not suffer the consequences. The PAH (with varying degrees of success)uses the three mechanisms that Young (2000, p. 173) argues civil society can use todeepen democracy: opposition and accountability, influence over policy, and changingsociety through society.Melucci (1985, p. 795) argued that contemporary social movements contest

dominant codes through conflicts, ‘breaking the limits of the systems’ whileattempting to create a new symbolic order. In positing a participatory model based onthe active ongoing participation of ordinary citizens in the decisions that affect theirlives, many social movements protesting against the crisis are not only arguing for anew symbolic order but also for a new institutional framework for political democracy.In this, they form part of a ‘democratic turn’ of contemporary autonomousmovements in their re-engagement with the state and the issue of democracy itselfwhile reconnecting symbolic and material claims (Flesher Fominaya 2014; 2015).

Conclusion

The PAH has engaged in a sustained campaign using the discourse of human rightsnot only to claim the right to housing but also to justify the use of a particularlycontroversial protest tactic against individual politicians. This personalising ofpolitical responsibility in turn is linked to personalising the impact of austeritymeasures by highlighting the human drama behind each individual eviction in theescraches themselves. This twinning of the political responsibility for the crisis and itseffects with the demands for respect for human rights and ‘real democracy now’ is adefining feature of the 15-M in Spain, which in turn forms part of a wider socialdemand for increased citizen participation and a new understanding and practice ofdemocracy in Spain today (Sampedro & Lobera 2014). The escrache, therefore, is notjust a colourful tactic but also acts as a barometer of public opinion, particularlyregarding the extent to which Spanish society feels the existing political class isillegitimate and the democratic system needs to be reformed.If the acampada Sol encampment of 15-M acted as a sort of starting pistol in

bringing critiques and demands about Spanish democracy to a wide audience, it hasbeen the sustained actions of networked groups engaging in daily forms of resistanceto austerity, like the PAH, that have maintained this critique and its visibility byforcing a response from political elites. In so doing, they have highlighted mechanismsof power and exclusion, bringing them into the sphere of public contestation, andquestioning and destabilising the legitimacy of political elites.


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In this struggle, political elites have fought back, not only to justify a particulareconomic model, in which austerity cuts are presented as an unfortunate necessity, butalso to defend a representative model of democracy that invests them with thelegitimacy to make such choices on behalf of citizens and for the greater good. At thesame time, they reject the legitimacy of citizens who occupy public space in order todirectly manifest their will. In Spain, these arguments are tied to a refusal on the partof both majority parties (the governing PP and the official opposition PSOE) torespond to the demands of millions of people who have taken to the streets. Thesepeople have not only called for the government to provide more welfare and care forcitizens in the face of an economic crisis but crucially have also demanded themodification of the existing democratic model to increase citizen participation and torespect existing democratic institutions in letter, practice and spirit.

This ‘democratic turn’ is one of the most noteworthy features of this current wave ofmobilisation and one that distinguishes it from the previous anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal mobilisations in the global justice movement in Spain (Flesher Fominaya2015). If the Spanish transition represented an economic, political and culturalwatershed (Sampedro & Lobera 2014), the 15-M and the levels of support it hasreceived represent a rupture with that transition and the pacts negotiated therein.

Spanish resistance movements in the context of the crisis – of which themobilisations around housing and the PAH represent only one part – offer aninvigoration of the public sphere or agora.At their heart lies a profound contestation ofthe hegemonic narratives that shape citizens’ lives. These resistance narratives call for anoverturning of the economistic logics that drive dominant understandings of ‘crisis’and the justification of austerity measures. As an important actor in anti-austerityprotests in Spain, the PAH joins the 15-M in characterising the crisis as a ‘swindle’.It refuses to see the human drama of those losing their homes to foreclosures andevictions as inevitable – and therefore acceptable – costs of the crisis (PAH 2012c).

The PAH and 15-M have been remarkably successful in offering the public analternative reading of the crisis and austerity. The support for the PAH, its maindemands and even the controversial escrache campaign reflects the rather astonishinglevels of popular support for the main demands of the 15-M, with three out of fourcitizens sympathising with the movements’ main demands (Sampedro & Lobera 2014,p. 15). The escrache, with its elements of bearing witness, highlighting politicians’moral responsibility for the crisis and its effects, and demanding greater participationof citizens in politics and responsiveness to them, is an emblematic expression of thedemand for democratic renewal and for the laying to rest of the Culture of theTransition. The intense debate over the escrache analysed here reflects a much moreprofound social debate over the nature of democracy and the Culture of the Transitionthat is consistent with the decline in satisfaction with democracy noted by a number ofscholars over the past few decades (Della Porta 2013, p. 185; Feenstra & Keane 2014).

The escrache controversy represents a wider contest over democracy that transcendsthe housing issue, and that has had an impact far beyond it. Escraches have played acrucial role in the wider 15-M’s delegitimation of the current political regime, paving


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the way for the spectacular rise of new political parties like Podemos and former PAHspokesperson Ada Colau’s Barcelona en Comu. Starting with an attempt to reformSpain’s housing law and stop the evictions of thousands of families, the PAH has endedup playing a key role not only in redefining the crisis but also in redefining Spanishdemocracy and reshaping Spain’s political landscape.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Antonio Montanes Jimenez for his help in searching for and coding the data. Thanks tothe Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship for funding. Thanks also to the editors and anonymousreviewers of South European Society and Politics for their helpful criticisms and feedback. Finally,I thank the Department of Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, for hosting myMarie Curie Senior Research Fellowship, which made this research possible.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to the United Nations Report on the Right to Decent Housing, recent researchestimates that approximately 70 per cent of foreclosures in Spain are related to the employmentcrisis (2012, p. 11).

2. The total is constantly updated on the PAH’s website: www.afectadosporlahipoteca.com3. This stands for ‘Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence’.4. In slang the term means to reveal a public personage’s bad actions or intentions, thereby

damaging their public image.5. In Spain the term afectados (affected) is used in place of ‘victim’ to avoid the connotations of lack

of agency of the latter term.6. Manifestarse is also the word for ‘protest’ in Spanish, so this has a double meaning here.7. The wording of the question was: ‘Do you agree with these types of campaigns as long as they are

peaceful, to try to get politicians to vote for certain issues according to their own values even ifthey go against the opinion of their party?’ Support from PP voters dropped from 87 per cent inMarch to 68 per cent in April.

8. The Madrid municipalist platform Ahora Madrid (formerly Municipalia and Ganemos Madrid)also had a remarkable electoral result, falling just one councillor short of the PP, which has ruledin Madrid for over 25 years. Ahora Madrid’s candidate for mayor, Manuela Carmena, a formerjudge and human rights lawyer, became Mayor of Madrid on June 13, 2015. Like Barceloan enComu, Ahora Madrid is closely associated with the 15-M and includes candidates from a numberof small alternative left parties.

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Cristina Flesher Fominaya (Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen, UKand Department of Sociology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth) has a PhD insociology from the University of California at Berkeley and is currently a seniorlecturer at the University of Aberdeen. She is an editor of Social Movement Studies, anda founding editor of Interface Journal. Her latest book is Social Movements andGlobalization: How Protests, Occupations and Uprisings Are Changing the World(Palgrave Macmillan).


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Redefining the Crisis/Redefining Democracy: Mobilising for the Right to Housing in Spain's PAH...

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